Bearss Edwin C. - The Five Forks Campaign and the Fall of Petersburg

At the request of Theodore P. Savas of Savas Beatie, I have prepared this Introduction for readers to understand the circumstances that brought about the research and writing behind these Five Forks chapters. They originally appeared, in a slightly different form, in Volume 2 of The Petersburg Campaign: The Western Front Battles, September 1864-April 1865. The first volume of this publication, as readers recall, was subtitled The Eastern Front Battles, June August, 1864 (2012).

Good fortune smiled on my future when I entered on duty with the National Park Service (NPS) on September 28, 1955. It was then I began my forty-year career in the NPS as an historian at Vicksburg National Military Park. It was one of the then 179 significant natural, historical, and recreational areas administered by the NPS, a bureau created by Congress on August 25, 1916.

A short four years before, in December 1951, Conrad L. Wirth had become the services fifth director. On doing so he found the NPS units and their facilities overwhelmed by its admiring public. Rising personal incomes, the 40-hour week, and the family car had fueled a postwar travel boom for families young and old, and the national parks, it seemed, bore the brunt of the surge. Visits to the parks soared from six million in 1942 to thirty-three million in 1950, and to seventy-two million in 1960. Park facilities and roads were overwhelmed.

Wirths response was the MISSION-66 initiative, a 10-year program to upgrade facilities, staffing, and resource management throughout the system by the 50th anniversary of the NPS. President Dwight D. Eisenhower endorsed the program while Congress was likewise enthused, appropriating more than a billion dollars over the next ten years for MISSION-66 improvements.

Coincident with MISSION-66 planning, the NPS was confronted by the approach of the Centennial of the Civil War. Since President Franklin D. Roosevelts Executive Orders of 1933, the NPS had become responsible for the parks and monuments administered by the War Department. These included thirteen Civil War battlefields, forts, and sites.

Encouraged by the burgeoning visitation during the mid-1950s to its flagship Civil War parks, Director Wirth worked with citizen-action groups that successfully lobbied for passage of a federally funded Civil War Centennial Commission (CWCC). This paid off on September 7, 1957, when President Eisenhower signed such a bill into law. In both the legislation and discussions between the CWCC staff headed by Maj. Gen. U. S. Grant III, President Grants grandson, and Director Wirth, the NPS was authorized to undertake as part of its MISSION-66 program the further preservation and development of such battlefields and sites, at such times and in such manners as will insure that a fitting observation may be held at such battlefields or sites on the centennial of the event commemorated. A linkage between the MISSION-66 planning, implementation, and projects was thus established.

At this time, all the services for Civil War battlefield parks, except Antietam and Gettysburg, were located in the Southeast Region headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. To schedule and implement planning to insure that the SE Region could meet Director Wirths commitment, a meeting of the Washington and Regional managers, planners, and affected park superintendents and historians was held in Rossville, Georgia, at the headquarters of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. The meeting took place in the first week of September 1958. These superintendents brought with them the approved MISSION-66 documents to support approved construction, staffing, goals, etc., at their respective parks and to have them in place by the respective centennial dates. Among the key documents needed to guide planners were missing items in the parks Master Plans, i.e., Historical Base Maps, Troop Movement Maps, etc. and supporting documented narratives.

It was agreed that I would prepare drafts of Historical Base Maps and Troop Movement Maps in those SE Region parks that did not have them and forward drafts to the Eastern Office of Design and Construction (EODC), then located in Philadelphia, to finalize and include in the subject parks Master Plans. To accomplish this assignment, my supervisors transferred me to the SE Regional Office, but I continued working out of the Vicksburg park.

The reason I was promoted and given this plum assignment was an earlier detail I accomplished for the Washington Office. In early December 1956, I had joined a high-profile park service planning team representing the Washington and SE Regional Offices and EODC in determining the boundaries of Pea Ridge National Military Park. This Arkansas park had been authorized by Congress on July 20, 1956. The act, signed by President Eisenhower, provided that the NPS would study the area and designate the boundaries, and the state would acquire the land. My work on this study team was commended by my associates, most of whom had joined the NPS in the mid-1930s.